Titan Submersible Implosion | OceanGate Neglected Safety Issues, Former Employees Say

The company operating the submersible Titanwhich imploded in the ocean last year, killing all five people aboard, had been plagued by equipment problems in the years leading up to the disaster. OceanGate also fired an engineering director who refused to approve a deep-sea expedition, according to testimony Monday at a Coast Guard hearing.

THE Titan has suffered dozens of problems on previous expeditions, including 70 equipment issues in 2021 and 48 more in 2022, investigators revealed Monday, the first day of two weeks of testimony. The investigation is aimed at shedding light on what went wrong during the submersible’s ill-fated June 2023 expedition to see the wreck of the Titanicin the Atlantic.

According to investigators, during part of the winter preceding the fatal accident, the Titan was stored in freezing temperatures outside a facility in Newfoundland, with no protection from the elements.

Then, less than four weeks before the fatal mission, the craft was tested before being found “partially sunk” two days later, following a foggy night on the high seas. A few days before its implosion, five people aboard the Titan were thrown against its wall as it resurfaced after a mission.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Maritime Board of Inquiry met Monday in South Carolina for its first public hearing into the disaster, to begin determining what went wrong during the ship’s mission to visit the wreck of the Titanic.

The first witness was Tony Nissen, former technical director of OceanGate, the underwater exploration company that operated the submersible. He was visibly shaken after watching the Coast Guard’s initial presentation on the long series of problems that have plagued the Titan in the months and years leading up to the trip, and described these issues as “troubling.”

Mr Nissen said he was fired in 2019 after refusing to approve an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic that year because he judged the hull of the Titan dangerous. OceanGate, he said, lied and instead blamed the cancellation of that mission on problems with a support vessel.

“That wasn’t true,” he said. “We didn’t have a hull.”

He described a previous case, in April 2018, when the Titan was apparently struck by lightning while in the Bahamas for testing. He told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who later died in the implosion, that there was a good chance the lightning had compromised the hull of the Titan. Mr. Nissen said Mr. Rush refused to believe him, insisting that “everything would be fine.”

Asked at the hearing why the company had not made efforts to comply with ship certification or regulatory standards, Mr Nissen said the founder had shown no interest.

“I wouldn’t say there was no effort,” he said. [Mais] Stockton [Rush] did not wish to take this path.

Security gaps

Another witness, Bonnie Carl, the company’s former chief financial officer, said she left in February 2018 over safety concerns. Those concerns included questions she heard about the design, and seeing people she described as young engineers in their late teens or early 20s “working on the sub” without any supervision.

“It became clear to me that OceanGate was not the place I wanted to work, if that was their attitude toward security,” she said.

The “basic factual information” from the disaster hearing, detailed in a lengthy report early Monday, did not address whether the submersible crew knew they were in mortal danger. The report said that “throughout the descent,” the crew sent “no transmissions indicating any problem or emergency.”

The report then recounts the terse communications between the submersible and its support vessel as the latter approached the bottom. Titan reported that he had “dropped two wts,” a reference to the weights that help the craft descend. This communication was cited by some observers immediately after the disaster of the Titan as a sign that those on board were perhaps aware of the danger and were attempting to resurface urgently.

But Tym Catterson, an OceanGate contractor who helped launch the submersible on the day it implosion, testified Monday that he was sure Mr. Rush dropped the two weights — totaling just 70 pounds — to help the ship land and better control it, not to surface.

“It’s not enough weight to go back up,” Catterson said of the two dropped weights. “He’s just getting rid of his weight to slow down.”

The crew gave no further sign of life. At that point, the Titan was more than 2 miles below the surface of the Atlantic. About 30 minutes earlier, he had sent a message saying “all is well here.”

What to expect from the hearings?

The exact cause of the implosion has been the subject of a Coast Guard investigation for more than a year. But much of that work has been conducted out of sight, with few new revelations about what went wrong. Monday’s public hearing began with an overview of the investigation and an animation of the submersible illustrating what investigators have learned so far.

In total, two dozen witnesses are expected to testify before the commission over the next two weeks, including former OceanGate employees and marine safety experts who have insight into the causes of the fatal accident.

The commission is also likely to discuss evidence it has gathered, including details of the design of the Titan and company safety guidelines.

The submersible Titan disappeared on June 18, 2023, when it lost communication with its support vessel after plunging into the water about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. On board were Mr. Rush, Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British businessman; Mr. Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman; Hamish Harding, a British aviation tycoon and explorer; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert who had visited the wreck of the Titanic dozens of times.

Last month, Mr. Nargeolet’s family filed a lawsuit against OceanGate, claiming that the company’s CEO misled Mr. Nargeolet about the safety of the vessel. OceanGate suspended its commercial and exploration operations following the accident.

Four days after the submersible disappeared, debris from the craft was found about a third of a mile off the bow of the TitanicMonths later, divers found human remains among the debris.

This article was originally published in the New York Times.

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